Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Iraqi war veteran and war critic Paul Hackett discussed his decision to drop out of the Democratic senatorial primary in Ohio on Feb.21 with Hardball's Chris Matthew:

MATTHEWS: Where we're going is why you think they buckled. Did you make too many comments that were hard for them to defend? Was anything you did after the recruitment of you that justified their loss of faith?

HACKETT: Not from my perspective, but I'm sure that my outspokenness on the war issue and many other issues that I believe in made them nervous.

The majority of Americans and Democrats now oppose the war in Iraq, but the leadership of the Democratic Party refuse to take this razor to the political throats of Bush and the Republicans and finish them.

If Hackett was pushed out for his outspoken opposition to our continued occupation in Iraq, then there is no possibility of anti-war congressional or presidential candidates coming from the Democrats.

Even if the Democrats win back a few seats in Congress in 2006-and I don't think they will make significant gains-their unwillingness to take a unified position in favor of immediate withdrawal from Iraq means that nothing changes.

None of the various putative Democratic presidential candidates is willing to step forward and and say, "We must leave Iraq now."

The Democrats still believe that they can win by becoming imitation Republicans. They think that they can be seen as better on national security not by challenging this adminstration's incompetence but by becoming bellicose war hawks.

They are as culpable for the continuing American death toll in Iraq as the Republicans as long as they continue to support our occupation of Iraq in exchange for what they hope will buy them political power.

I know it is futile to vote for third-party candidates, but I will not vote for any candidate for state or federal office who does not support withdrawal from Iraq and neither should you. The lesser of evils is still evil.

The Consequences of Our Invasion of Iraq

Mark Danner on the terrible consequences of our unnecessary, failed invasion of Iraq.

"Today in the New York Times, there was a striking report about the steady upsurge in the number of attacks since the beginning of the insurgency. This has been inexorable, which shows that the insurgency is growing more formidable, despite all these reports about American and Iraqi successes in the war. That story appeared on Page A12 of the New York Times. It wasn't even news. Accompanying it was a piece about the failure of infrastructure in Iraq. Though the United States has put roughly $16 billion of American money into the Iraqi infrastructure, the number of hours of average electricity available to an inhabitant of Baghdad has gone from 24 hours to 4. All the figures on infrastructure point downward, so that if you're an Iraqi, you have seen your standard of living steadily decline under the Americans even as you now have a much greater chance of being kidnapped or killed or blown up in an explosion or having your children kidnapped. Very little of this gets through to Americans. In fact, the story has generally been migrating off the front pages and becoming a small version of Orwell's famed distant and never-ending war between East Asia and Oceania.

I think it's widely known at the top of the administration that Iraq is a failure. It's also been recognized by many that, in strategic terms, the Iraq war could turn out to be a catastrophe because it's essentially created a Shia Islamist government sympathetic to Iran and, among other things, made it impossible for the U.S. to adequately pressure Iran on the nuclear issue."

Now that full-fledged civil war has broken out in Iraq, William F. Buckley writes the epitaph for our invasion of Iraq and Bush's historical reputation.

"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."